Adventure Not Taken
by coldqueen
Summary: Post Journey's End, set many years later. They had a life together, not perfect, but it was theirs.


**Title:** Adventure Not Taken

**Genre:** Television

**Series:** Doctor Who

**Characters:** 10.5, Rose Tyler, 10

**Spoilers:** 4X13-Journey's End

**Rating:** PG

**Summary: **They had a life together. It wasn't perfect, but it was theirs.

* * *

She was brilliant.

She had a smile that never failed to make the room seem brighter, and eyes that in certain light sparkled gold. Her entire being _always_ glowed with an inner light that emanated from her compassionate and caring soul.

Rose Tyler was brilliant, and for sixty years, he'd been brilliant with her.

They'd had their fights, their arguments, their make-ups, their break-ups; always coming back to one another because in this universe there could never be anyone else. In some ways they were both born that day in Norway. The Oncoming Storm and the Bad Wolf were left behind in another time and place, because the couple that walked off the sand and into a new life was not those people.

New Rose, new life, new universe, new everything; sometimes at night the old times came back to him, however.

Dreams, so new and fragile, so disturbing and so comforting in those long first nights. That first smile they'd shared, strangers in a desperate situation reaching for one another in a darkened hall. The first fight they'd had, his thirst for revenge laid bare before her and revealed for the self-hatred it was. Their first kiss, him saving her life but truly just happy to feel her soft lips under his.

In this new world, they had firsts as well, but not the ones he'd expected.

They'd never married, never had children. In all truth, he wasn't sure how that had happened because when he'd first arrived here he'd been convinced that was what she'd wanted. A life with him that could be as normal as possible, a home, a family, a relationship in the most human way possible.

He'd stepped off the Tardis for the final time with the idea of a Domesticated Doctor in his head and instead found that Rose really only wanted the Doctor. She hadn't cared for carpets, for drapes, for children, for silly pieces of paper linking them for all time. She'd only wanted her Doctor. She'd only wanted to love her Doctor and be loved in return.

The same love between them, transcending time, space, dimensional barriers. A love to last the ages, yet it'd taken him this long to realize it. To realize that when she said "I love you" she meant it with her entire being.

Standing there, he imagined that maybe she knew. Somewhere inside that too-clever mind of hers, behind the eyes that always saw too much, maybe she knew. Maybe when she looked at him, made love to him, laughed with him, cried with him, screamed at him, ran from him, chased him, maybe she knew.

Did she see that sometimes, even without the Tardis, time stopped for him? That it felt like he was standing in one place while the world moved around him, because he was waiting, always waiting. The other shoe to drop, the shadow to move across the sun, her smile to fade.

Energy doesn't disappear, only moves from one form to another. He knew that, in his oh-so-clever Time Lord mind. It felt like cheating.

Decades living with her, trying to love her with all his being, but part of him was always...apart. Watching, making notes, taking mental pictures, preparing itself for the end. Years spent living in halves, one completely immersed in this life, the other merely waiting.

Did the Doctor realize when he'd left him here what was going to happen? Did he realize that he could have his cake and eat it too? Did he realize the position he'd placed not only himself in, but also Rose?

Rose, brilliant Rose, who burned within his heart always.

She was gone now. The ache of it was bone-deep and permanent. It would never fade. Half of him burned with love for her still, and it warred with the cold of his grief. Always in halves, always torn in two directions; the conundrum of his life never ceasing.

He stood next to her grave, so human yet still so alien.

They had a good life, long and full of adventure. It didn't turn out the way he'd imagined it, but he would never have tried to change it. They'd grown old together, as was right, as it always should have been.

His body was worn down and he knew he didn't have long. He never imagined that she'd go before he did, that he would have to let her go. He never wanted to have to live without her, not the way his other self had to.

He smiled down onto the headstone and bent on creaking knees to brush frail shaking fingers across her name.

_Rose Tyler._

The rock was inscribed with only her name, because honestly no other information was important. He was the only one around who came to see it often and even he would be gone soon. Tony would come by every once and a while, but he and Rose had never been close. A twenty year gap in age would do that to siblings.

He wanted to smile again, because she'd always loved his smile and hated to see him cry.

She wasn't here to wipe them away, though, so they fell unabated.

The energy was pulling at him as death crept closer. He chose to come here, to be near her in the end. He would carry part of her back with him because that was what she would have wanted.

It'd taken him months to realize that it wasn't truly over.

As long as he lived, it wouldn't end.

He was just a copy, after all.

Brought to being by the energies of time, he lived out his lifetime here with her. He held her hand as her last breath sighed from her lips and knew that when his last breath dissipated into the English breeze...he himself would dissipate too.

He was a human Time Lord, but still a Time Lord. When he died his body would become energy and would seek to be reborn as was only proper of his kind.

He wasn't the true 'owner' of the energy, however. Taking his mind, his memories, his emotions, that energy would cross all barriers and return to the Doctor.

It felt like a betrayal.

In the end, the Doctor would get his adventure. Somewhere in time in that other universe, the real Doctor would suddenly remember her. The Doctor would remember waking up beside her, remember her smile, remember that breathy sigh she made when he pressed himself inside her, remember memories that were not rightfully his. The Doctor would remember a life he refused to allow himself. The Doctor would remember the love she'd learned to have for her human Doctor and the real Doctor would bask in the knowledge that she was happy. The Doctor would remember the pain of losing her but it would be tempered by the memory of having her.

The Doctor would get his happy ending, but Rose would never get hers.

Rose got her human Doctor and she got years of love and laughter and saving the world and living.

The Doctor would get the knowledge that he'd made the right decision.

The sun suddenly broke through the gray clouds of the sky and blinded his eyes. He didn't have long; he could feel that mystical energy that'd created him coiling tightly in his chest. He sank to the ground and pressed a fist against his chest.

He held the essence of her, drawn from his memories and from this place; he held her tight to him until the end.

He'd been happy. She'd been content.

He hoped the Doctor thought it was worth it.

* * *

It may be crap, but I really couldn't resist writing out this plot bunny.

Review, please.


End file.
